Although they seem to be on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and would then seem highly unlikely to agree on anything politically, Mao Zedong and Lenin do share a common enemy in Parliamentary Democracy. They both criticize that form of government for its inefficiency and impracticality. For instance Mao believes that the ideal form of government is a reformed type of Soviet communism, Maoism. Lenin, on the other hand, does not feel like Soviet Communism, Leninism, should be reformed. Both Lenin and Mao, believe that, through a Communist Revolution, and the complete overthrow of Capitalism, Russia/China, and subsequently the world, can eventually achieve what they considers to be “true democracy.”

Mao claims that in parliamentary regimes, the continuous changes in majorities cause neglect

Communism in Russia never did achieve what Lenin described as “complete democracy.” Instead, a succession of dictators, most notably Stalin, provided the people of Russia with only a different, but certainly no better, form of repression than that which they had experienced under the Tsars. Mao, on the other hand, developed Marxism-Leninism to a new and higher stage in the course of his many decades of leading the Chinese Revolution, the world-wide struggle against modern revisionism and, most importantly, in finding in theory and practice the method of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat to prevent the restoration of capitalism and continue the advance toward communism.

Mao grasped the dialectical relationship between the necessity of revolutionary leadership and the need to arouse and rely on the revolutionary masses from below to implement proletarian dictatorship. In this way, the strengthening of the proletarian dictatorship was also the most extensive and deepest exercise in proletarian democracy yet achieved in the world, and heroic revolutionary leaders came forward such as Chiang Ching and Chang Chun-chiao who stood alongside the masses and led them into battle against the revisionists and who continued to hold high the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the face of bitter defeat.

In the course of fierce ideological and political struggle, millions of workers and other revolutionary masses greatly deepened their class consciousness and mastery of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and strengthened their capacity to wield political power. The Cultural Revolution was waged as part of the international struggle of the proletariat and was a training ground in proletarian internationalism.

Resembling, Leninist philosophy, Mao further developed the understanding that the “people and the people alone are the motive force in the making of world history”. He developed the understanding of the mass line: “take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action”. Mao stressed the profound truth that matter can be transformed into consciousness and consciousness into matter, further developing the understanding of the conscious dynamic role of man in every field of human endeavor.

Lenin further describes what true democracy would look like, and explains why it could never exist alongside capitalism: “Only in Communist society, when the resistance of capitalists has been completely crushed…when there are no classes, only then, ‘the state…ceases to exist ,’ and ‘it becomes possible to speak of freedom .’…only then will democracy begin to whither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery…of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse …without force, without coercion…without the special apparatus for coercion known as the state.” (11)

Some topics in this essay:
Cultural Revolution, Party Mao, French Communes, Resembling Leninist, United Front, Powers Mao, Communist Party, Leap Forward”, Bolshevik Party, Communist Revolution, communist party, cultural revolution, socialist society, dictatorship proletariat, proletarian cultural revolution, proletarian cultural, mao developed, political power, mao believed, class struggle, proletarian dictatorship, struggle modern revisionism, ideological political line, “the leap forward”, marxist extends recognition,